An IBM Selectric sits at the heart of an exhibit on the campus of the University of Dayton, a 37-pound, bulky brown electric typewriter — state-of-the art, in its time. It belonged to humorist Erma Bombeck, whose canon includes 4,500 columns, 12 books and years of morning show commentaries — four decades of making America laugh.
The typewriter is part of the exhibit “Beyond the Byline: Erma Bombeck’s Story,” and serves as a testament to the woman who wrote those famous words: “Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”
You remember Erma, the godmother of columnists everywhere. And maybe you remember the Selectric, too. Its keyboard had mass and depth, rendering typing a tactile experience — like dancing with your fingertips. The words leapt from your brain onto the paper in a cacophony of clicks and clacks that made writing pure joy. Mistakes? No problem. With a Selectric you could pause, hit the backspace key, correct the typo and then resume dancing the Selectric slide all over again.
The exhibit was just one of the charms of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, which has been held on the southern Ohio campus every other year since 2000. This year’s conference earlier this month was attended by some 400 women writers (including a few brave men), who were influenced in some way by Bombeck, or who grew up wanting to write just like her.
It also attracts some of the funniest, most endearing writers in the literary world. Among the speakers this year were Anna Quindlen, Jacqueline Mitchard, Zibby Owens and the amazing Wade Rouse, who writes under the pen name of his maternal grandmother, Viola Shipman.
“It took me every ounce of strength I had not to weep like a baby when I saw her typewriter,” said Rouse, whose keynote was the emotional high point of the weekend — a full-circle moment for the writer whose grandparents bought him an aquamarine Selectric as a kid.
One of the first things he wrote on it, he said, was a letter to Bombeck, whose columns often appeared on the family refrigerator. She wrote back and sent an autographed picture with a handwritten note: “Keep writing, laughing and believing Wade.”
Erma’s columns often appeared on my childhood refrigerator, too, usually about diets or raising kids, or just laughing at the simple things in life. I was attending my second in-person conference, and it is life-affirming.
At any given lunch or dinner, you could sit down at the table and strike up a deep conversation with the person sitting next to you. There was wine, and in true Erma fashion, cake at every turn. And there was warmth and wisdom, like these words that once came from an IBM Selectric:
“When I stand before God at the end of my life,” Bombeck wrote, “I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, but could say I’ve used everything you gave me.”
